


We Didn't Come Here To Talk

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon Route, Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 16:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20294848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: Life is for the living. Felix, Dimitri, confessions, complications. (Spoilers up to Blue Lions Chapter 18.)





	We Didn't Come Here To Talk

Felix hits the ground flat on his back, and for a long moment, all he can do is stare helplessly up at the black sky and its billion distant stars, waiting for the breath the blow forced out of his lungs to begrudgingly return to him. When it does, he sucks the sweet air in with an audible, greedy gasp, once, twice, thrice, until a familiar face fills his vision, blinking down at him and wearing an expression that skirts alarmingly near to concerned. 

He hates that, really. 

He doesn’t need his _concern._ What he needs is to get up, to be stronger than this, to strike out again and again until all the bile inside him burns away and leaves him cleaner, better. 

“Felix,” the boar prince -- King -- says, and then, incredibly, idiotically, he offers up his hand. 

Felix slaps it away, a flush of anger that he’d dare presume and embarrassment that he thought it necessary at all joining the blotchy remnants of his prior exertion to turn him into a surly, scowling, red-faced mess. He jumps to his feet, recovers his clumsy, blunt-edged training blade, and tries not to notice the way Dimitri’s mouth twists or the way his heart stutters at the thought that perhaps he is disappointed. Old habit. This isn’t about impressing anyone. 

“Again,” Felix says, crouching low, readying himself to strike. “Prepare yourself,” he warns, because Dimitri’s posture is tense, sure, but not in the right way. He’s standing with the posture of a put upon politician, not the brutal warrior he is, and Felix isn’t sure what the hell he’s going to do if he tosses that training lance of his aside and starts _talking_, so he sprints forward to deny the both of them that chance.

Felix is fast, faster than Dimitri, certainly, but the boar has learned some meager finesse since the Academy, since the war, and it’s enough. His blunted blade meets the old notched haft of Dimitri’s lance and the impact makes his elbows ache, throbbing in time with the dozen or so fresh bruises he’s picked up in the last hour. He grunts with effort and pulls back and strikes again, _clack_, again, _clack_, again, and there is nothing clever or refined in the way he fights, tonight, even though he knows, he _knows_ he could never hope to beat this man with brute force. 

This isn’t about winning. 

Dimitri rebuffs him again, deflects another blow and throws him off with force enough to send him stumbling, and while he’s off balance and regaining his feet like he’s a green apprentice who’s never fought a battle in his life, Dimitri lunges forward with the rounded end of his weapon and drives the thing viciously forward, striking him just beneath the sternum. The padded breastplate he’s wearing can only do so much against the boar’s ridiculous raw strength, and the force of it sends him sprawling backward, flat on his back once more. 

He lays there, panting. Is it enough? No. He can still think. He reaches blindly for his sword, gasping, his fingers scrabbling in the dirt. Ridiculous. Humiliating. 

“Felix,” the boar says again, because he is an idiot that seems not to understand that he is here not to _talk_, not to play at being a man, he is here because he is the only one that can beat Felix soundly enough to grant him some measure of temporary _peace._

But only if he keeps his mouth safely _shut._

His fingers close around the hilt of his blade and he drags himself up onto his knees. “Again,” he pants, his throat raw, his voice ragged. He hardly feels human himself, anymore. If only it could be so easy. 

“I think that’s enough,” Dimitri says, and worse, he says it so softly, with such _feeling_, four words and a thousand layers. Felix slams the useless blunt tip of his sparring sword into the dirt and leverages himself up to his feet, shaking. 

“I’ll tell you when it’s enough,” he spits. “Ready yourself.” 

“Felix, please --” 

He springs forward. “Shut _up,_” he hisses, breathless before he can even strike, and when he does there is no power behind it, no strength, and Dimitri bats the blow aside without hardly even moving. Felix pulls back to regroup, to strike from another direction, but his weakness is catching up to him, his body sluggish to respond, and Dimitri catches him across the back with a blow that sends him face-first into the dirt, the sharp cracking sound of it echoing in his skull. 

A little better, now. His thoughts can only race so fast when he has the boar prince rattling his brains. He licks his lips and wrinkles his nose at the taste of blood and sweat and mud. Disgusting. Shameful. 

“That’s _enough_,” he hears Dimitri growl, and here he is battered and struggling in the dirt to regain even his hands and knees, and he cannot help but laugh at the sound. Oh, he sounds so very put upon. So inconvenienced. He drags himself up, wheezing, and collapses back onto his ass and open palms, fingers digging into the dirt. 

“Had enough, have you?” he demands, breathless. He hears Dimitri approach before he sees him, his steps have always been so loud, so heavy, and he’s so damned _tall_, when he stops before him Felix has to scoot backward -- humiliating -- and crane his neck to see his face. 

And the expression he is wearing -- 

“Stop it,” Felix insists, glaring upward. 

“Stop… what?” Dimitri gazes down at him, a little furrow pinching the skin between his brows. He only has the one eye, but it’s expressive enough for two, Felix thinks, damn him. 

“Being so concerned for me,” he snaps. “Taking pity on me. Having _mercy_ on me, I don’t want it. I asked you here for a reason, boar, and if you think that it had anything to do with your sad eyes, or listening to you speak --” 

“I understand,” Dimitri says, softly, and so unexpected are the words that Felix’s own heated protests falter, stuttering into shocked silence. Stupid, he chastises himself, numbly.

“You understand,” he says, flatly. 

“I understand what it is like to feel as though the moment you stop moving, the dark and dangerous things howling at your heels will overtake you.” He hesitates, that one piercing eye of his flickering off into the vacant distance. “I understand what it is like to allow them to do so, too,” he says. 

His voice is so soft, so rich with the depth of his own emotion, and Felix cannot stand to hear another word. He spits, a glob of bloody snot staining the sand at Dimitri’s feet. 

“Your demons are nothing like mine,” he snaps. Mercifully, Dimitri stays quiet. “I am nothing like you, beast. You prowl and snarl and take your pain out on everyone around you, friend and foe alike, visiting pain and punishment on the living in the service of the dead. If the thoughts I run from were to catch me, I promise you, the only one to suffer for it would be _me._ My thoughts, my demons, my responsibility!” He scoffs, glaring upward. He hates the way Dimitri fills his vision, how he blots out everything else, how the world with him in it constricts itself around his presence, and how the world without him had felt so empty and broken and bare. “How dare you suggest you could possibly _understand._” He holds his beastly, one-eyed gaze, daring him to argue.

Instead, Dimitri’s shoulders slump, his chin falls and hits his chest. Felix sucks in a breath. He barely swallows the urge to soften his words. 

“You are right, of course,” Dimitri says. “You are a better man than I, Felix. Stronger, in all the ways that truly matter.” He lifts his spear, one-handed, and gazes at it as though it holds all the mysteries of the world -- and then he turns and hurls it away from him, sending it clattering off into the shadowy distance. Felix cannot possibly miss the look of disgust he wears as he does so, and he knows without asking that it is all directly inward, at himself. 

That, at least, is a thing they have in common. Disgust at themselves, at their own perceived weaknesses. 

“How pathetic,” he mutters. 

Dimitri’s lips twist, and he turns slowly back around to face him. “I cannot change the past, or even what I have become. I understand that your opinion of me is not likely to change, and yet --” 

“Stop this,” Felix says, abruptly certain he does not want to hear the rest. “I’m not interested in changing the past. Certainly I could care less about changing _you._” 

Dimitri flinches away from him, and Felix pretends not to feel the reflection of that hurt like a splinter in his own heart. 

The quiet stretches, spooling out like an impassable void between them, until it, too, is utterly unbearable. 

“You speak like you presume to understand what I’m thinking,” Felix says, pushing this matter unwisely just to break that suffocating silence. “That’s laughable, really, in regards to anything, but it’s especially arrogant to imagine you understand my feelings for _you._”

Dimitri crouches down before him, bringing their eyes to a level, and Felix’s mouth goes dry. Stupid. He shouldn’t have spoken at all. 

“Then tell me,” Dimitri says. “Hold nothing back. I want you to know, whatever our names, whatever our titles, Felix -- I expect nothing of you.” 

The words are a staggering blow, knocking the breath from his lungs once more, sharper and more vicious than any physical strike could ever be. Entire futures crumble to dust in his mind’s eye, futures he hadn’t even known he had been hoping for, futures where he and this ridiculous, selfish, _stupid_ king of his stand shoulder to shoulder to preside over a Kingdom united anew. Futures where King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd somehow becomes a man worth serving and Lord Felix Hugo Fraldarius, a man worthy to serve.

“Nothing,” he repeats, a little dazed, a little winded. “You expect… nothing.” He meets that one blue eye with a pathetic, beseeching gaze and feels so impossibly small. 

“Of course not.” Dimitri regards him warily. “I understand there is a history, a tradition. An unspoken expectation that must weigh heavy. Well, let me relieve you of it. This one thing I can do for you, at least.” 

And then he _smiles._

“Felix, whatever happens, however this war ends, please be assured… If there is a Kingdom still, in the aftermath, it will require no special service of you. Your father’s oath to my own is not binding between us. I ask you only return to your lands and your people, and lead them well. You need never lay eyes on me again, if that is your wish.” 

And he is still smiling, as though he has offered a golden goose on a platter and expects to be thanked for the bounty. 

“What is _your_ wish?” Felix asks, the words scraping out of him, dry, bitter dust on his tongue. 

The smile fades. Finally. 

“I am not worthy even to speak it,” he says, and something squirms to life in Felix’s belly, hot and oily and unpleasant, and for a second he thinks he really might just vomit, right there between them in the sand in the moonlight shadow of Castle Fhirdiad. Lovely. He swallows, hard. The feeling doesn’t quite pass. 

“I don’t care if you’re worthy,” Felix snaps. “Your own estimation of such things is meaningless. So speak truly. Is that your wish? That I take myself back to my lands and leave you with -- what, your ghosts?” He laughs, humorlessly, tonelessly, the sound harsh and grating even to his own ears, and Dimitri flinches once more. “Is that it? My father, my brother, they are there in your spectral menagerie, and their voices are sufficient, preferable, even, to mine?”

Dimitri’s one eye goes progressively wider as he speaks, and then he raises his hands as though to ward Felix off, shaking his head in mute denial. 

“Is that the truth of it?” Felix demands, his voice high, near to breaking. 

“Of _course_ not!” Dimitri growls, and then he’s up and standing again, looming, towering over him. He reaches down and Felix flinches back, but he’s slow, too slow, and Dimitri takes him easily by the arm, hauling him effortlessly up. He stumbles forward and Dimitri steadies him, and it’s humiliating, how it must look, Dimitri still and sure and strong and Felix wilting beside him. Their faces are only inches apart. Felix can feel his breath on his face when he speaks again. “Forgiveness,” he says, softly. “That is what I wish from you.” 

“Forgiveness,” Felix repeats, numbly. Incredulously. 

“You thought the world of me, once,” Dimitri says, and all those depths and layers of emotion have returned to his voice, now, turning the words into a labyrinth filled with spikes and pits and poison. “All I have ever done is disappoint you. I do not know that I can ever --” 

“Stop,” he says, desperately.   
“-- I do not know, Felix, if I can ever truly atone for all I have done --” 

“Shut _up,_” he begs. 

But he doesn’t. 

“I am sorry,” he says instead. “I would do anything in my power to atone for what I’ve done to you.” A sheepish smile cracks through the somber penitence of his expression, just for a moment, and though they are outside beneath the open sky, there is suddenly not enough air for him to breathe. “I would have let you beat me to a bloody pulp, just now, if I thought for a moment that I could get away with meeting you half-handed.” 

“I should kill you for even suggesting it,” Felix says. The words are bold, but in truth he is shaking where he stands. “_Letting_ me beat you. Can you imagine.” He is not sure, in fact, that he would still be standing, if Dimitri did not have such a firm hold on him, still. “It’s almost as shockingly idiotic as suggesting that I might abandon you.” He laughs, harsh and dry, and lifts a hand to cover the rough, ragged patch he wears over his right eye. “Can you truly be so blind?” 

Dimitri’s brow furrows. He covers Felix’s hand with his own, gazing down at him. “You cannot possibly wish otherwise. The things I have done…” 

“I thought you were _dead._” His heart is beating far too fast, pounding in his throat. “I thought they had murdered you, here, right here, I thought you were gone. I mourned for you, do you know that? I mourned you better than I have my own father. And then the rumours. No body. Secrets and lies. Five years, Dimitri! I thought, surely if you were alive, if you had somehow outlasted your own execution, you would find us. You would find my father, you would find -- _me._” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize! I don’t care for your apologies. I want you to _understand._” 

Merciful silence. He swallows, continues.

“I see now what you become when left to your ghosts,” he says. “I see now that I never want such a thing to happen again. You’re right, you know. I once thought the world of you. You shattered those illusions thoroughly enough, make no mistake, but that doesn’t mean…” 

He trails off. He isn’t sure what, exactly, he wants to say. How much he is willing to admit. 

How far he wants this confusing mess to go. 

“It doesn’t have to be your responsibility,” Dimitri says. 

He’ll never understand, Felix thinks, studying his face, his pained expression. 

“I want it to be,” he says, and there it is. He holds his breath. It’s as close as he’s ever likely to get. Dimitri studies him silently, so close, it is _ridiculous_ how close they are. Even a great big brainless boar like him ought to be able to put together his feelings, Felix thinks, based solely on how long he’s allowed him to be this suffocatingly _close._

Dimitri drops his hand, but his grip on Felix’s arm only tightens. It’ll probably bruise. He really is unconscionably strong.

“It’s late,” he says, and there’s a new quality to his voice, now. Hesitant, halting. Felix isn’t sure he’s ever heard it before, and something deep in the pit of his belly squirms as he considers it. 

“So?” 

“I…” Dimitri seems to realize what he’s doing, then, and he lets him go so fast it would have been comical if it hadn’t been so disappointing. He takes a little half step back from him, and clears his throat. “I’m… I should,” he hesitates, casts a funny little look around, as though he’s afraid they’re being watched. 

Well, maybe he should be, Felix thinks, a little faintly, even as the fraying thread of his patience snaps.

“_Speak,_” he demands. “Or have you lost the ability entirely, beast that you are? I shouldn’t be surprised, when --” 

Dimitri lunges forward and takes hold of him with both hands, fingers digging into Felix’s arms, and whatever flippant nonsense he had been about to speak dies prematurely on his tongue. Dimitri hauls him close, he’s so ridiculously _strong_, and then he bows his head and growls, very much like a beast in truth, and perhaps that’s half the point.

“My room,” he says, grinding the words out hoarsely. “I’ll be… if you... If I haven’t misunderstood...“ He licks his lips and just _looks_ at him. 

It’s... completely unbearable.

Ridiculous. 

How can he be expected not to break, faced with such a display? 

“Idiot,” he breathes, and he has the satisfaction of seeing Dimitri’s one good eye widen in shock as he cranes his neck and tilts his head and lifts himself on his toes, closing the distance between them, closing his eyes as he presses their lips insistently together. His thoughts spin. Far easier than words, he reasons. Dimitri inhales sharply. Felix wonders if he’s ever been kissed, before. 

He’s certainly never kissed anyone. 

Of course it would be _him_, he thinks, a little deliriously. The prince. The boar. Dimitri. Of course. 

His lips are soft against his -- soft, and so very still. 

He pulls back. 

“Sorry,” he gasps, without thinking. He tries to wrench free, and can’t. “Let go,” he demands, breathless. 

“Felix,” Dimitri says, instead, and then quite suddenly he has a hand at Felix’s hip, the other on his face, and then in his hair, tilting his head back, and suddenly the answer to an earlier question is perfectly, abundantly clear.

Dimitri has most definitely been kissed before. 

He parts his lips and runs his tongue lightly against the line of Felix’s own, inviting them open, and the moment Felix obliges him he takes full advantage of the opportunity to kiss him deeply, kiss him thoroughly, kiss him while groaning muffled into his mouth and digging his fingers into his hair. Dimitri’s mouth is hot and wet and moving urgently against him, his tongue licking boldly behind his teeth and against the roof of his mouth, and Felix wonders even as he clumsily attempts to reciprocate just what he’d do if he decided to bite him. He’d damn well deserve it. 

When Dimitri pulls back -- the _sound_ it makes, so damned embarrassing -- he’s breathing hard, his face flushed, his lips wet and shining. 

Felix figures he must look about the same. Wonderful. Just what he needed, all this mess. 

“You didn’t misunderstand,” he says, and his voice is hoarse and creaking like he’s forgotten how to use it properly. 

“Damn it,” Dimitri mutters, and Felix can’t possibly miss the way the ball of his throat bobs as he swallows. It’s like a dam’s broken, now, and all the most embarrassing thoughts he’s ever had are all rushing in through the ruins. Dimitri casts another wild sort of look around. “My room,” he repeats. “We can talk there.” 

“Talk,” Felix laughs, a little wild, himself.

“_Talk_,” Dimitri insists, and then he seems to realize that he’s still got his fingers all tangled up Felix’s hair and he nearly yanks a chunk free in his haste to let him go. Felix hisses at him, shoving him away and clapping a hand to the back of his head, and Dimitri looks so damn apologetic, what are they _doing?_

“Go,” Felix snaps at him, pushing him again. “I’m right behind you.” 

Dimitri opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, and then mercifully snaps it shut again, like he’s thought better of it, after all. He turns, hesitates… and then he’s off at a quick clip, straight for the castle. 

It’s arrogant of him, really, Felix thinks, not to so much as glance back. So sure he’ll follow. Or perhaps he’s hoping he’ll think better of all this and stay put. 

Not a chance. 

It feels obvious to him, what they’re doing, but though plenty of people notice Dimitri -- it feels like just about everyone is in need of something or another from him -- no one looks twice at Felix. They’re so used to seeing Dimitri in Lord Fraldarius’s shadow, now, it must be easy as anything to switch one for the next. It’s a sour, wholly unwelcome thought, exactly the sort of thought he’d threw himself into sparring with Dimitri to avoid. 

By the time they’re slipping into the royal chambers and Dimitri is telling his guard that he’s not to be disturbed under any circumstances, Felix is almost ready to call the whole endeavor off, after all, whatever it is. He’s tired, he’s out of his mind, he’s sore from the sting of a hundred new bruises, he’s fucked up, he’s heartsick, he’s just lost his father. He hasn’t even cried, yet. He isn’t sure he ever will. 

The door closes behind him, the lock catches and clicks. 

What are they doing? Just what does he think he’s doing, right now? 

He opens his mouth to excuse himself, to apologize, to mumble some pithy nonsense and flee.

Dimitri turns around, and, oh, Felix thinks, all his thoughts scattering into fragments. The look on his face --

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t you dare look at me like that.” 

“Like… what?” Dimitri stares at him, looking genuinely mystified. He brings his hands up to his face, like he can feel out his own offending expression. 

“Like you pity me,” he spits. 

“Ah…” Dimitri lowers his hands, and then he clasps them politely before him and smiles… though it doesn’t quite reach his one eye and its wary, searching gaze. “That isn’t pity, Felix. Come, now. Let’s… let’s talk, shall we?” 

“I didn’t come here to talk,” he says, numbly. “You know that.” 

“Even so,” Dimitri says, gesturing gently, “I did. Sit.” 

Silently, he obeys. The royal chambers are nothing if not comfortable. The late spring chill that had clung to the night air outdoors is all but banished in this place, with its fine carpets and thick furs and crackling fire. He fairly sinks into the chair. He’s painfully aware of the presence of Dimitri’s great kingly bed at his back. 

Dimitri seats himself opposite him, and for a moment, they regard one another in silence. 

It’s utterly unbearable. 

Felix crosses his arms and hunches his shoulders, shrinking into his seat. “If you have something to say, then say it,” he snaps. “No need to draw it out.” 

“I want you to know something,” Dimitri says, finally. “Those years I spent, alone, in exile… I would like to say that I wasn’t myself.” 

“But that wouldn’t be true,” Felix says, flatly. 

Dimitri nods. “You know the truth of it better than most,” he says. “You have always seen it in me, for as long as it has been there. You knew it better than I knew myself. You…” and he falters, here, voice catching, and takes a deep breath. Pauses to run a hand through his hair. “You hated me for what I had become.” 

“I never hated you,” Felix says. And then he winces, his gaze sliding away, down to stare at the floor. 

“I thought for a time that you merely resented me for living, when Glenn…” 

“Glenn,” Felix mutters. He rubs his eyes, shaking his head. Exhausting. “Should I have? Resented you for living? It seems you did plenty of resenting that fact for all of us. Shall we start the cycle anew, here and now? Shall I resent you for living, while my father is dead?” He snaps his chin up, brows pulled down, glaring defiantly up at him. “Shall I die in your stead, next? Perhaps that is the only way to get through. It seems to me that you have always given the words of the dead far more consideration than you have ever spared for the living.” 

“Please don’t,” Dimitri whispers, and the quiet horror in his tone is enough to keep him from pressing the point.

“I don’t plan to,” he sighs, instead. “Even now, I don’t know how to make you understand. Life is for the _living._ And to tell the truth -- it was easier to while away the years when I thought we had some, oh, infinite number still to live through.” He lowers his head, pressing a hand to his forehead, his elbow on his knee. “How utterly foolish.” 

“I doubt I will ever stop disappointing you.” 

“Everyone disappoints me,” Felix says, flatly. “You’re not so special.” 

“Ah,” Dimitri says, leaning back, and just like that the quality of the conversation seems to shift. There’s a hint of mischief in the way he says it, enough that Felix drops his hand and peers up at him, frowning. “So, then…” Dimitri leans forward, brows arched. “That in the training yard, just now…” 

“Don’t,” Felix says, covering his face anew. What a farce this was turning out to be! 

“Not just me, then?” Dimitri goes on, regardless. “Who else has there been, Felix?” 

“Careful, now,” Felix says, without dropping his hands. If anything, he presses his fingers more firmly against his eyelids. “You are far too much of a genuine idiot to afford to play one on purpose.” 

“It was only your own implication.” He sounds so smug.

“Shut up,” he hisses. 

He hears the sound of Dimitri’s chair scraping back, the rustle of cloth as he stands. The flickering quality of the light behind his eyelids changes as Dimitri’s broad frame eclipses the hearth. Felix turns his face up into his shadow. 

He isn’t surprised at all when he feels Dimitri’s hands at his wrists, his cool fingers wrapping about them, pulling his hands away from his face. 

He _is_ surprised when he hears him sink down his knees before him. His eyes flicker open. Saints save him, but he can feel his face already flushing hot -- and having his face this close to Dimitri’s again certainly isn’t helping. 

“What are you playing at,” he complains. 

Dimitri slides his hands up and links their fingers together, and the look on his face, the _smile_, it’s too soft, too sweet to look at directly. Felix turns his gaze up to the ceiling, swallowing hard. He squeezes Dimitri’s hands in his. It can’t be real. Dimitri on his knees before him, looking at him like that -- absurd. The stuff of his most private, humiliating fantasies. This can’t be real.

“Can I ask…” Dimitri tilts his head, that mischief back in his voice. “How long have you wanted…?” 

“You? I’m sure you can _guess_.” 

“I’m not sure I can. Felix. If you want me to stop --” 

“I won’t,” he snaps, too fast. His face blooms with fresh heat. He must look ridiculous. 

Dimitri just laughs, quietly, and then he presses his lips into those soft, sensitive places along the line of Felix’s throat, stealing his breath away. He presses Felix into his seat, pinning his hands against the backrest, kissing open mouthed down thin cords of muscle toward his collarbones. He scrapes his teeth over his skin, there, and when Felix gasps aloud he follows the sting of it with his tongue -- which makes him gasp for another reason altogether. 

Has he done this, before, too? He can’t imagine when he found the time. 

Dimitri’s hands release his, and he swallows and watches silently as he moves to loosen his collar, to undo buttons and ties and clasps, to pull insistently at and cast aside his padded armor plating and leather guard. He grunts softly as he untucks his undershirt and Felix moves to accommodate its removal, allowing Dimitri to strip him layer by layer until, at last, his hands move to the clasps of his belt. 

His one curious eye flickers up, asking permission. Felix clenches his jaw and nods, so faintly that the movement is nearly imperceptible. 

He’s more than ready, now. His cock practically springs free the moment Dimitri has his pants open, and he thinks faintly that perhaps they could have gone back, before, but now they’ve crossed a line in the sand and nothing can ever be the same, between them. Which is nonsense, because that was true the moment he turned his face up and kissed him in the courtyard. 

Still. 

“You… seem like you’ve done this before,” he says. 

“Hah, do I?” Dimitri meets his eyes even as he wraps a hand around his cock, and Felix bites his lip and resolves to keep his voice down and his hips still -- to a point. “Good,” Dimitri breathes. “You’re… enjoying it, then?” 

“Have you?” He isn’t even sure why he wants to know. It doesn’t especially _matter._ Dimitri starts a slow rhythm, stroking up and down his length, and he grits his teeth and squirms in place, breathing fast and shallow. 

“Of course not,” Dimitri says, practically scolds him, and -- and, _oh._ The knowledge then that he’s the first, that he’s the _only_ one Dimitri has touched this way, done this for, that pools warm and pleasant deep inside him, and a soft, ridiculous sound escapes him, a breathy little moan. “Ah…” Dimitri murmurs, quickening his pace. “That’s the right answer, isn’t it? It’s the truth.” A pause. “Answer mine?” 

It takes him a moment to even remember the question. 

“Yes,” he sighs. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise. “As though you couldn’t tell,” he adds, though the obvious pleasure in his voice surely lessens the sting of his scolding. 

Dimitri says nothing to that, and for awhile, the only sounds are of Felix’s gasps and begrudging little moans, their mingled, ragged breaths, and the obscene sound of skin on skin as Dimitri pleasures him. 

And then. 

Felix has his eyes closed, for the moment, his hand over Dimitri’s, guiding him, squeezing his fingers around him, encouraging. His hips are rocking, now, moving of their own accord, and he’s listening to the sound of Dimitri’s breathing, harsh and raspy and ragged, and hoping that he’s enjoying this, too, somehow, _somehow_ \--

And then. 

Hot breath at the tip of him, making him gasp, making his eyes snap open in faint alarm. 

“Wait,” he gasps. 

“Let me,” Dimitri says, _pleads,_ really, practically begging. “Let me do this for you. Felix.” 

“It’s too much,” Felix protests, breathless, shaking his head. “Dimitri. I’m going to --” 

“I don’t mind.” He lowers his face further. “Really.”

He bites down on his own lip, hard enough to hurt, and makes a little desperate whining sound he’ll deny vehemently, later. And then he nods, even more imperceptibly than before. 

It’s enough. 

Dimitri gives him one last blinding, confident little smile, and then he parts his lips and takes him into his mouth. Felix watches as long as he can stand to, which is to say, not very long at all, and then he squeezes his eyes shut and moans long and low despite himself. His mouth is hot and wet and absurdly good around him, and when he adds his tongue, flickering it gently across the very tip of his cock, he jerks his hips forward without thinking at all and Dimitri makes a surprised sound, and, oh -- 

“_Fuck_,” he gasps, squeezing Dimitri’s fingers around him. Dimitri makes another sound around him, a humming sort of moan that vibrates from the tip of his cock all the way through him, and he opens his mouth to tell him to stop, but he’s too far gone for words, and all that comes out is a needy moan as he spills over the edge and empties himself onto Dimitri’s clever, searching tongue. 

He can’t bear to watch. He keeps his eyes squeezed tightly shut throughout, until he’s slumping and spent in his seat, chin against his chest, breathing hard. He hears Dimitri’s surprised grunt, feels him jerk back, feels a hand tighten on his knee. Dimitri coughs and sputters and then, when he’s caught his breath, he _laughs_. 

And that’s what finally gets Felix to open his eyes, glaring down at him. 

He’s mostly wiped the mess off his face. _Mostly_. 

“So glad you find this amusing,” he growls, but there’s less venom in it than he might have liked, because -- well. There’s only so venomous even he can be, after feeling so very… 

Dimitri leans back. He’s still fully clothed, Felix realizes, with something very much like regret. 

Embarrassing thought. He shakes his head. “You didn’t have to,” he adds, quietly, face burning. 

“No,” Dimitri agrees. “But I did want to.” And then he hauls himself up to his feet. Felix feels small and diminished and ridiculous, mostly naked and sprawled out before him like this, but when he moves to cover himself, Dimitri leans over him and places his hands on either side of his head, gripping the back of the chair, trapping him in place. 

“What?” he asks, warily, gazing up at him. 

“Kiss me,” Dimitri suggests, and there’s something unbearably intense in the suggestion, in the tone, like it’s a command merely shaped like a request for the sake of appearances. 

And he’s just spilled himself less than a minute ago, so the molten heat that rolls through him on hearing it shouldn’t be _possible_, but there it is. He reaches up to slide his fingers into Dimitri’s hair, to grip him tight and yank him close. His lips are already parted for him by the time they meet, and Dimitri wastes absolutely no time finding Felix’s tongue with his own, letting him taste himself at length. The difference is undeniable, musky and salty and -- filthy, really, but he loves every moment of it.

He’s feeling more than a little emboldened, again, when they break apart to breathe. He reaches brazenly down to press his palm against the obvious lump in Dimitri’s pants between them, squeezing him curiously, tracing his shape through the fabric. Dimitri’s one piercing eye flutters closed, and he exhales with an audible little groan. 

“Would you have the same of me?” Felix asks him, pointedly. He’s more than willing. He’s fantasized about performing the act more often than he has receiving it, if he’s being honest. Which he never would be. Not aloud. 

“I would like that,” Dimitri admits, gazing down at him. “But if you are opposed…” 

“I’m not opposed,” Felix says, too fast once again. Dimitri’s brows arch. 

And so, to distract him from further inquiry, he sets to removing his belt. The ploy works famously, and soon every trace of smug curiosity is gone from Dimitri’s face -- replaced with other, equally embarrassing things, true, but Felix is too busy to concern himself with such bothersome analysis. He has Dimitri hard in his grip in moments, and he turns his eyes up expectantly as he draws him out.

“Sit, if you are going to,” he snaps, even as he explores the length of him, squeezing at the base, thumbing gently over the slit at the tip. Dimitri stares down at him blankly, like he doesn’t comprehend the question, and then he shakes his head. 

“No, I… I can stand. Here. Go on,” he begs, he actually begs for it. “Please. Felix…” 

And that’s something, isn’t it? Dimitri begging for him. Who would have ever thought. 

He isn’t so proud that he pretends it doesn’t affect him. He lets out a shivering breath, bobs his head in a too eager little nod, and before he can think too hard about what he intends to do next, he bends his neck and brings his lips to the tip of Dimitri’s cock. He’s beading with fluid there already, and it smears over his lips as he drags them across the slit, there. He draws back and Dimitri makes a desperate little sound -- it makes something powerful swell in his chest, that sound, knowing he’s responsible for it -- and he licks his lips slowly, savoring him.   
They don’t have quite the same taste, he thinks, faintly.

“Felix,” Dimitri begs, again, and he _wants_ to tease him further, he really does, but the truth is simply that he wants to be good at this, good for him, so he obediently leans forward and takes him into his mouth in full. And it feels good, surprisingly so, to wrap his lips around that hard line of heat and feel Dimitri shudder, to make him moan and gasp and swear. He takes him as far as he comfortably can and adds his tongue, flat along the underside, and Dimitri sinks his fingers into his hair and guides him, nails digging into his skin. 

It’s embarrassing, how much he likes this. How much he enjoys it when Dimitri pulls him forward and begs him sweetly to take just a little more of him, how he savors the moment his cock fills his throat and nothing exists in the world except for his prince’s ragged cries of pleasure and desperate begging for more. If anything, he finds himself wishing Dimitri might use him more roughly, fantasizing about him holding his mouth firm in place and fucking into him with reckless, wild abandon. 

When he spills himself at last, it’s with little warning. “Felix,” he pants, as though he hasn’t cried his name a thousand times already, and then his cock erupts in his mouth and there’s really no time to think. It’s all he can do to swallow before he chokes. Even then, he has to pull off before it’s done, coughing wetly, cheeks ablaze. 

He finds himself thinking -- next time, he’ll be better at it. How perfectly presumptuous, he scolds himself. Next time. Really. 

“Felix,” Dimitri says, reverently, heedless of his ridiculous, stuttering thoughts. He cradles Felix’s face in his hands, wiping the mess on his lips and chin away with his thumb. “Goddess above,” he breathes, and then he’s kissing him, again, no permission required. Felix throws himself into this kiss as enthusiastically as the last, perhaps moreso, since this time he can wrap his arms around Dimitri’s neck and hold him fast throughout. 

And that’s embarrassing, too, how much he enjoys just that little, simple thing. Holding him close as they kiss. Ridiculous. 

He has his arms wrapped about him still when Dimitri lifts him up into his arms, and he grunts in affronted surprise, tightening his grip as Dimitri staggers the both of them forward toward the bed. He had resigned himself to those plush sitting chairs and perhaps the floor, afterward. The knowledge that he’s wanted in his bed -- it’s almost too much to bear, on top of everything else. 

“I shouldn’t stay,” he says, even as Dimitri lays him out atop the thick fur of his blankets. “People talk.” 

“Let them talk,” Dimitri says. “I want you here. At least this one night.” 

He can’t bring himself to argue the point. He’s wanted this for so long. Why fight it? 

“...One night,” he agrees. Dimitri makes a soft, happy sort of sound. Cloth rustles and leather whispers as he finishes undressing himself, there at the bedside, and Felix can’t help himself; he turns his face to watch. He’s seen much of it before, really... but never quite like this, sprawled out naked in his bed. 

The bed dips and creaks as Dimitri climbs in over him. “Felix…” he breathes, quietly. Felix holds himself still in response, holding his breath. “I think what I said before is true,” Dimitri continues, responding to the quiet. “I am bound to disappoint you again, sooner or later. But I hope that if and when that time comes… talk to me, please. Tell me, and I swear…” 

“No _promises_,” Felix interjects, voice hot. “None of that. This? This is just tonight.” 

A long silence. His heart beats wildly, his pulse pounding in his ears.

“Very well,” Dimitri agrees, eventually, reluctantly, and the way he says it, it’s like a knife twisting in Felix’s guts. “Just tonight.” He shifts beside him. He sounds so -- 

“Boar,” Felix growls, turning to face him.

“Felix?” Dimitri blinks. 

“Consider it incentive. To win this war. More importantly... To _survive_ it. Understand?” 

This time, Dimitri answers quickly, and with a soft, small smile, the sort that really has no business at all on a face like his. Unfair. “Understood,” he says, solemnly, and Felix rolls his eyes and turns away from him, settling on his side. Better, he thinks, though his heart hasn’t slowed a single damn bit, and maybe it never will.

Still.


End file.
